Late Nights in Baker Street
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: Seven minutes to daylight. A dead slayer and an injured Sherlock. What's a vampire got to do around here to get back to Baker Street?
1. Outrun the Sun

The dead body was the least of their worries. Frankly, it was the wooden stake in Sherlock's thigh that was the most troubling, closely followed by the approaching dawn. It would be sunrise in seven minutes, and it would take them about six minutes to get back to Baker Street. Of course, that was at full run. And without a stupid leg injury.

In John's own words, they were rightly fucked. (Sherlock, of course, said that he could arrange for them to be rightly fucked if John would only give him five minutes. John swiftly put an end to that plan.) He didn't relish the thought of being caught outside in daylight, and nor could he say that he wanted them to be found with the body of a notable slayer either.

Nights like this, he wished he was back in the army.

Every second they stood deliberating their options was wasting more time. So they took off, keeping to shadows for the most part, silently deciding that if the worst came to the worst, they could always take the chance and risk hiding in somebody's cellar.

It didn't come to that, though. About a block from Baker Street, John hauled Sherlock over his shoulder and ran. When they tumbled through the door, each knew it was good to be back.


	2. Kitchen Medicine

Sherlock hardly notices when John carries him into 221A and lays him down on Mrs Hudson's table. The wood in his leg sends pain shooting through him every time he moves. It burns its way through his body, searing along veins which haven't carried human blood in a long time and making him feel vaguely nauseous, as if he hasn't fed in days. (He fed earlier in the night, because John made him do it. Deep down, he is glad.)

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees John go to his knee and brace it firmly. He tenses himself, fingernails digging into the edges of the table, teeth biting into his lower lip so he doesn't scream as Mrs Hudson wraps her nimble hands around the stake and pulls. The back of his head bashes the table anyway, pain screeching through his body. He breathes harshly against the agony – though he is long-past needing to anymore – a force of habit left over from his human years.

He doesn't realise that the whimpering noises are coming from him until John is at his head, gently stroking back his curls and pressing chapped lips to his forehead, quietly, calmly reassuring him, distracting him from Mrs Hudson's murmured spells as she irrigates the wound, and binds it with foul-smelling herbs and bandages.


	3. Bed and Blood

Afterwards, John helps Sherlock up the stairs to their own flat, Mrs Hudson going ahead to be sure that the black-out curtains are drawn. Sherlock isn't much help to the operation - being half-conscious with pain still gnawing at his leg - but they get there in the end. John puts him to bed straightaway, gently divesting him of his clothes. The trousers are only fit to be burned, but it's better to burn them than leave Sherlock a pile of dust. (How easily it could have happened doesn't bear thinking about.) 

Mrs Hudson - on the other hand - makes straight for the kitchen, now containing only half of the experiments that it had earlier in the night. With a ridiculous amount of familiarity - though she is not their house-keeper - she takes several bags of blood out of the fridge for heating. Tomorrow, she will berate her boys for being so careless while they were out, but better to let them rest tonight, so she takes the blood into the bedroom (the things she's stumbled across in there remain between her and, well, not God, exactly.) 

They prop Sherlock up between them, his eyes closed though he is still somewhat aware, and with the tenderness of a mother and a lover, they force him to drink the blood.


	4. One Nightfall On

After dark on the next night, John stretches awake. Though sleep was not part of his plan in the morning, it pulled him under in the end. Sherlock's out of it still, and likely will be for a while as his body works on healing the stake wound, with the help of Mrs Hudson's concoctions. So John shuffles into the sitting room, intent on reading the evening paper. (It's good for a vampire to keep up with the news, even when it isn't relevant.)

Instead, he finds Mycroft - pale and wan – sitting in John's usual armchair, the bandage on his left arm indicative of the night before and its full moon. (Hell on werewolves when they try to control themselves, though the arm appears to be Mycroft's only wound this time.)

John sighs – used to the elder Holmes brother popping in like this just before nightfall to be sure to catch them when they wake – and settles into Sherlock's own chair, raising an eyebrow.

"How is he?" Mycroft asks softly, voice intentionally low, not that it could wake Sherlock at a time like this. (John suspects their mother is downstairs with Mrs Hudson, and Mycroft wants to know precisely how bad the situation is without worrying her. He behaved the same way after the Change, when all of the animosity between him and Sherlock dissipated.)

"Still sleeping. It'll take him another couple of hours to wake after an injury like that," John replies, equally softly. (Strange to whisper in his own flat, he thinks, but Violet Holmes is a force to be reckoned with when she's worried, especially about her boys. Much like Mrs Hudson, that way.)

Mycroft nods, as if he suspected as much. "The report said he was staked, but it didn't specify where. And I knew he wasn't dusted."

"It was the leg. Thigh. We hardly made it home before sunrise, but he insisted on killing the Slayer one way or the other."

"He would, wouldn't he?"

Before John can reply, the door swings open and Violet bustles in, red hair greying slightly now. She envelops John in a hug, and kisses him on both cheeks, as she always does when she sees him.

"Mycroft told me what happened," she says, voice hoarse with un-cried tears. "How is he? Will he be alright?" She pulls back, dark eyes studying his face carefully. "Oh, of course he will. You wouldn't be out here otherwise." She smiles slightly, clearly relieved, and lets John go before hurrying into her son's bedroom, door closing quietly behind her.

John sinks back into the chair, exhausted already though the night has only just begun.


	5. Blessed Afterlife

"Don't ever do that to me again," John murmurs into Sherlock's hair, bodies wrapped together, arms and legs - even Sherlock's wounded leg, stiff and sore as it is - all tangled in each other. "I don't know what I'd do if you'd gotten dusted."  
"I'm sorry," Sherlock whispers back, voice soft in the darkness though the world is brightening outside the curtains. "Promise me you'll be more careful too. Stake was almost in your chest. I had to intervene."  
"I know. I'm sorry too."  
"Well then," and the smirk is evident in Sherlock's voice, tired though he still is, "I feel as if I'm owed some retribution from the whole affair." He shifts carefully in the bed, enough to be able to press his lips to John's, softly, carefully, as if John is the injured one.  
"Sure you're up to it?"  
"As I ever am anymore."  
So they partake of the only carnal pleasure left to them, exploring each other's bodies. Lips pressed to lips, and necks where pulses once thrummed and finger tips and long-healed scars. Tongues snaking into mouths and the dips at collarbones and elbow dimples (and other places too, of course, though the pleasure now is psychological, not physical.) Eventually, each dozes off, feeling - as they so often do in this afterlife - remarkably blessed.


End file.
